Last night at Le Poisson Rouge, Ben Lear was wearing a wetsuit that made him look like a Starfleet Medical Officer and shaking hands. The 23-year-old son of 89-year-old television mogul and activist Norman Lear (you might know him for producing "All in the Family" or founding progressive advocacy group People For The American Way) had just finished performing Lillian, a show that's like an epic blend of Arcade Fire, Feist, a Muppet adventure and rock opera (although Lear prefers the term "folk opera," for its lower pretentiousness quotient). The story, which is by turns touching and bizarre, follows a young man’s search for his lost love, which takes him to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a soup of plastic that's about twice the size of Hawaii. While there, he meets a group of jellyfish (played by a gospel choir wearing shiny robes, plastic bottles, and Christmas lights) that attempts to baptize him in a pocket of air. Sample lyric from this section: “You little jellyfish, come to me/ You hold the key to a secret place/ With all the things/ That’ve gone to waste.” After an argument with a sea captain, the young man comes to accept that the past is “not lost, just plain dead.” READ MORE

Yes, Pete Townshend of The Who is working on another rock opera. Will it be as good as 1969's monumental Tommy (the first of its kind, wherein the above song, "See Me, Feel Me," here performed at Woodstock, originally appeared) or the also awesome Quadrophenia from 1973? Well, it's no less ambitious, at least. "In this case the songs are interspersed with surround-sound 'soundscapes' featuring complex sound-effects and musical montages," says Townshend, according to the NME. "Floss will be a son-et-lumiére musical piece, intended for outdoor performance, or arenas." Floss? The Who's new son-et-lumiére is going to be called Floss? Huh. READ MORE